Cairo, 13 March (AKI) - A fatwa or religious edict issued by a senior Egyptian cleric invites people to end their neighbours' marriages if they can prove they are collapsing from irreconcilable differences.

"If the evidence that the neighbours present is verified, the court has the right to make the couple divorce," said Sheikh Jamal Qutb, cited by Dubai-based TV network Al-Arabiya.

Qutb, an Islamic scholar and former head of the fatwa committee at Egypt's most prestigious religious institution Al-Azhar, said that a community, including family members or neighbours, should have the same right to end a marriage as the couples themselves.

However, he said neighbours should try to intervene and solve a couple's differences. If they fail, they can then go to court and present evidence that the marriage cannot be saved.

The cleric also said that a couple's refusal to divorce may be for several reasons, and that a judge should investigate whether these reasons are valid.

In Islam, a man has no right to go back to his wife if he has married and divorced her three times unless she has remarried and divorced from her second husband.